


River Has Run Dry

by VeteranKlaus



Series: Bad Things Happen Bingo [7]
Category: The Umbrella Academy (TV)
Genre: Bad Things Happen Bingo, Childhood Trauma, Drowning, Gen, Hurt/Comfort
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-17
Updated: 2019-10-17
Packaged: 2020-12-21 04:33:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,444
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21068906
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/VeteranKlaus/pseuds/VeteranKlaus
Summary: The waves lap up the shore of the beach peacefully, growing and receding, tumbling over one another in a fluid dance. Diego doesn't want to get out the car.Prompt: childhood trauma.





	River Has Run Dry

**Author's Note:**

> Wow, this prompt could really just be for any of them, huh? I ended up going with Diego and referencing his comic powers of being able to hold his breath indefinitely.

It was Klaus' idea. And Allison and Vanya backed him up, and so did Ben, then Luther. Five couldn't be bothered agreeing or disagreeing, and before Diego had known what it would entail, he had thought it was a good idea. Get out of the city, rent a little chalet out of the city, where it would be quiet and peaceful and give them all a break, a change of scenery. It would be good to get away. And it had been; the chalet was far from the city, a five minute walk from a lake, and a quick drive to a beach. They could walk down into a nearby town and get their shopping in, and a little bar - although they didn't go into it, despite Klaus' insistence that he would be good and remain sober. Not that Diego didn't believe him; he didn't trust the temptation of being freshly sober around alcohol. 

It was good to be out. Diego did enjoy the peace, and he thought it was somewhere Eudora might enjoy staying out for a weekend. But he tried not to let his thoughts linger too much on her, for he knew the thoughts always turned sour quickly. 

They had been there for a few days when Allison said that she wanted to check the beach out. It was a nice day, warm, cloudless, the sun beating down upon them. Klaus heartily agreed, voicing Ben's own opinion - apparently Ben had wanted to see the beach or the sea for quite some time - and Five hadn't cared. Luther, although unwilling to take his jumper off, was willing to sit on the sand and watch their stuff. 

Diego drove. He didn't enjoy the drive at all. 

The memories lapped up on him akin to waves themselves. Some days were better than others. Some days he paid no mind to the past and the goings on in the Academy years ago. He never forgot, but sometimes he almost did. Almost. 

Today was not one of those days. Today was one of the days in which the memories crashed upon him like a tsunami, violent and vivid, leaving him waking up in a tangle of sweat-soaked bedsheets, gasping for air, and delaying having a shower for as long as he could to avoid the feeling of water on his body, and when he did he turned the water to near-boiling to contrast the freezing cold of his memories. 

He let Klaus mess with the radio to distract himself and he dipped out of most conversations, not finding it in himself to speak up. He focused rather on the way his car purred beneath him, how he expertly glided his hands over the leather of the steering wheel, guiding the car over roads and around turns. He prided himself in his car and keeping it in the exact condition as it had been when it had first been made. 

The beach wasn't busy, but there were a few people there; a few families, a few couples, a couple of elderly people, children playing in the water, creating castles out of sand moulded together with water, decorated with shells and sticks. As soon as the car came to a stop in the nearby car park and Klaus all but threw himself out, throwing his hands up to the sun.

"See! Isn't this lovely!" He exclaimed, hands going down to rest on his hips, face turned towards the sun, eyes narrowed behind the thick frames of a pair of sunglasses.

"I'll take our stuff to a spot," said Luther, and Five helped. He seemed more intent on reading his book peacefully rather than going to the water, like Klaus, Allison and Vanya were. He wondered if Ben was there too, knee-deep and smiling. 

Diego couldn't bring himself to get out of the car. Even after everyone had gotten their stuff and settled either on the picnic blanket on the sand or had discarded off their shirt and shorts (Klaus) to run into the water, Diego had yet to turn off his car.

He could see the waves tumble over one another.

_The water crashed from a pipe leading directly to the glass tube, violent, slamming against the glass. It was tall; as if Reginald had intended to have it used for years to come when he might hit a growth spurt._

He wondered if it was cold; it had to be, a body of water that large couldn't be warm.

_It was freezing. As if he had just fallen into ice, shocking his system and making him seize, stealing his breath._

And he knew that, when it would get windy, the waves would turn dangerous. Violent, merciless. Would the seaweed hidden beneath the surface tangle itself around their ankles? Their wrists? Like shackles, holding them down beneath the surface.

_Before the water came in, Reginald cuffed his ankles to the bottom. He hadn't known why. Then the water began, and it rose up above the cuffs, above his knees, and it didn't stop. The cuffs kept him far from the top of the glass encasing him, kept him from air, kept him under despite the way he had thrashed, had punched the glass and kicked. The water reached his neck and despite how much he had yelled, even if his stammer, emphasised by his panic, had drawn each word out, Reginald had done nothing. He had watched with an impassive gaze, his eyes as cold as the water flooding him. _

_He swallowed water. It slid down his throat and flooded his lungs painfully, and seconds ticked by, turned into minutes that he went through with no air, and he began hyperventilating, swallowed more water, more and more and more. He wasn't sure if there was pain from the lack of air, or from swallowing and breathing in so much water. _

_Half an hour passed. He didn't drown, he didn't fall unconscious. He supposed that the panic and pain was from the shock of being fine with no air when he was so used to it. He might not need it, but there was no feeling of safety and security with that fact. When water invaded his nose and his mouth, froze him to the marrow of his bones, flooded his lungs and his stomach, he could do nothing but scratch his nails, some now cut blunt and ragged, against the glass, and each time he tried to breathe he panicked again. _

_Reginald hadn't cared. He watched the timer more than he watched him, scribbled down notes. He only let the water drain after he began to retch and the feeling of suffocation made him a limp, delirious mess. _

A knock on glass jolted him sharply, and for a moment he feared he was back there; stuck behind glass, Reginald tapping his knuckles across it just enough to see Diego's eyes flick towards him and confirm he was still conscious and aware. But he was in his car, knuckles pale around his steering wheel, and Five was by his window.

"You ever coming out of there?" Five asked, eyebrows raised. Although his face was smooth and impassive, concern was evident by the way his eyebrows drew together, evident in the pinch of his lips and the creases by his eyes.

Diego swallowed, tasted no water, and turned his car off, nodding. "Yeah," he murmured, his voice raspy. Five stepped back to let him open the door and shakily peel himself out of his car, eying him. Diego looked to their siblings. So carefree, unaware of how it felt to have the suffocating pressure of water be all you knew for hours on end, the deathly soft lull of small waves as your body fought its instincts to breathe in air and to protest the incoming water. 

"There's some shops down the street," Five said, jerking his head in the opposite direction of the beach, of the water. "I need a coffee. Coming?"

They had iced coffee in the cooler sitting beside Luther, and Five knew that. 

But Diego nodded his head anyway, and let Five mutter about the heat and the sun, as if there was no ulterior motive to walking out of earshot of the waves, into a cool café, out of sight of the beach, and spoke above the waves in his memories about the stories he had from his time in the Commission; the not so gruesome ones, the ones about clubs that Klaus would like and about conspiracy theories that turned out to not be so false. About things that made Diego smile and forget about the crushing pressure of water, at least for now.


End file.
